Durarara!! 12.5

Set sometime in the six month time skip between the twelfth and thirteenth episodes, the OVA begins with Togusa facing some pretty bad luck when what appears to be a UFO flies by. Elsewhere Mikado, Masaomi, and Anri sit in a park, Isaac and Miria make another quick appearance, and Celty takes the UFO as a sign that aliens are invading. All with Walker’s narration.

Half an hour before this the policeman who would later offer to help Anri only to be called away in the fifteenth episode, restrains a woman who took to a man with a bottle when he told her that her boyfriend is no good. At the same time Celty is delivering a red bag chased by random thugs to a warehouse and Kadota’s gang drives down the highway. The policeman takes the woman, Hanako to his booth to hear her side of the story, where she tells him how she met her boyfriend, Ginjirou and that she knows that he’s a screw up. She blows her nose with a handkerchief and recognises the red bag that Anri brings in.

It then goes back another half hour to when Mikado, Masaomi, and Anri were visiting a maid cafe where they had to have things like crosses put on their cheeks or wear cat or rabbit ears, when they step out Masaomi feels that all they need now is fireworks. A man runs past them with bag, chased by the men in black who rough him up a bit but leave him with his bag, before he can reach it Izaya picks it up. Celty picks up the her bag, suspicious about it’s contents but finds herself chased by some men in black suits who mean business, she passes Kadota’s gang who also happen to have a red bag but have left it on the roof so the aliens could see it. So the men in black turn their sights onto them, shooting at the van, Kinnosuke hears the gunshots and gives chase only for the car that the men in black were in to crash. The men in black are still right behind Celty and she now has some random thugs chasing after her. Mikado wants to take the ears off but Masaomi and Anri won’t let him when they find the bag that fell off Togusa’s van.

It then goes back even further to two hours before this as the random thugs chasing Celty turn out to be after a bag full of money that was stolen, in order to find out where it is they contact Izaya while the men in black are facing a similar situation and do the same. Mikado’s group meet up at the station with Anri in a Yukata as part of Masaomi’s plan but the stares make her want to go home, this was also what lead to them going to the maid cafe as his plan kind of worked. Ginjirou tries to avoid Shizuo fearing for his life when he sees his girlfriend Hanako talking with him and Tom, the men in black spot him and Shizuo and Tom leave since Hanako’s story was making Shizuo angry.

Three hours even before this Shizuo and Tom were working together to collect the debt that Ginjirou owes their company, he tries to escape down the tree after Hanako gives him his lunch. Shizuo starts shaking the tree but sends him flying instead when Ginjirou makes the mistake of mentioning that he kind of looks like Hanejima Yuuhei. It was also due to this that Kadota’s gang found the bag they had. At Shinra and Celty’s apartment a documentary about aliens is playing which makes Celty make sure that Shinra isn’t an alien and she receives a job request from Izaya.

Which all lead to her being cornered in the warehouse by the men in black and thugs however before they can get her Mr Shiki and the Awakasu-kai arrive who deal with them by turning the lights off, splashing them with fluorescent paint, and beating them up in the dark. The contents of her bag are then revealed to be a type of reptile that was thought to have gone extinct 70 years ago and that the men in black were in fact smugglers with Izaya dropping off the bag that the thugs intended to use to buy the reptile.

As Mikado’s group sits in the park Masaomi tells them how he thought that they should do something like this before it was too late. After receiving a call about their money from Izaya the thugs barge into an office used by the company Shizuo works for, looking for him. His boss gives him the go ahead and he sends them across town leading to the UFO that was seen at the start, to Mikado’s group this was the fireworks they were looking for. Ginjirou arrives back feeling down that he lost the bag full of money but seeing Hanako and the riceballs she had made for him instantly pulls him out of this.

Thoughts:

As a quick side story set during the time skip between the first and second story arcs, this was pretty fun as we got to see some of the characters show up again and it also seemed to follow Rhogo Narita’s style of building things up and then having the separate plots all being related or crossing paths in some way. Though it was a bit more prominent in how it did this and other than that we also got to see Isaac and Miria again, but unlike last time they didn’t manage to steal the show.

The way that this was shown also made it pretty fun, as by showing what had happened just before it ended and slowly going back over how things had progressed we were left wondering how things had reached that point. Which was also something that I liked about a few of the other episodes and even the Baccano! anime adaptation, and an example that comes to mind from the previous episodes would have probably been the girl from the first two episodes, Rio Kamichika.

Some of the stories we saw were pretty nice for what they were as well. Such as the two characters who probably would only appear in this, Ginjirou and Hanako, with Ginjirou being voiced by Kazuya Nakai (Date Masamune from Sengoku Basara, Rorona Zoro from One Piece, and Hijikata Toshirou from Gintama). Where we saw that she still loved him even though he was in money trouble along with being regarded as a screw up and that despite losing a bag full of money that could have solved all of this, that he was happy just to have her and the rice balls she made him. Mikado, Masaomi, and Anri’s story was also pretty nice for what it was, especially when you consider how Masaomi had left in the last episode.

Walker narrating the whole episode as a book he had written and changing some details to make it more like it was something that was interesting and provided a nice spin on it, and as usual the stuff that Kadota’s gang did was pretty fun to see. Aside from Celty’s fear of aliens coming up again we also saw her being chased by men in black who spoke English albeit in a weird way, and it was also weird to see the Awakasu-kai of all people deal with some thugs by beating them up in the dark though I guess they may have not seen a reason to go any further with it. As usual Shizuo was pretty awesome when he uprooted a tree and when he was the one who had actually caused the UFO that we saw at the very start.

Overall as a quick side story that wouldn’t have any effect on the plot I thought that this was alright, and it was great to see the characters show up again with Mikado, Masaomi, and Anri all getting a chance to do something together before they were separated. Along with Shizuo uprooting a tree on one of the debt collections he was on with Tom and Celty and Kadota’s gang being chased by English speaking men in black. As something that I had been looking forward to seeing it fulfilled my expectations, though I was a bit disappointed with how Shiki and the Awakasu-kai dealt with the thugs. But even then it was still pretty fun and I’m still looking forward to the next OVA which even though it’s not out to early next year, it’s set to include Izaya’s awesome sisters, the twins Mairu and Kururi.

Besides different advantages, a few disadvantages are also associated with spatial cognition.
If these lifestyle changes aren’t assisting in your weight loss program can be their like a miraculous green tea to cover, it will not help your well-being. Derived from the Camellia herb contains many potent antioxidants and is useful to use a natural product like tea help in weight loss, mixed with other ingredients.